Complaints that Blu-ray is too expensive—we say it often—may soon be harder to justify, now that Pioneer will release the $250 BDP-120 in April. It’s just a Blu-ray player—no fancy Netflix streaming here—but if all you’re looking for is an inexpensive player (and have no interest in the PS3) you could do worse.
Higher up the Pioneer food chain is where you’ll find players with some sort of auto-tuning feature. Like, you plug the player (preferably, a Pioneer one; it works, to an extent, with non-Pioneer ones, too, though) into the TV and it fiddles with the settings to best optimize it to your TV. Like, if you have your TV set to sports mode the Blu-ray player will auto adjust itself for optimal output. These will be a little more than $250, as you might expect, with the BDP-23FD rocking out at $600.
Too bad movies these days are rubbish.
People are used to spending $50 on a DVD player now. Hell, you can’t even buy two blu-ray movies for $50. The format is way out of people’s price range at the moment with the economy in the shambles that it is. The only blu-ray player at the moment that is worth the price is the PS3. That is only because it has both the POS PS in it and the blu-ray player. A 2 for 1.
Right, you want people to spend $400 on a PS-3 and your complaining that a $250 player (which will probably street at $200) is too expensive. Makes perfect sense to all of us frugal people out here!
Blu Ray currently is a TOTAL marketing failure!
The blu ray player prices are higher now in 2009 than in 2008 due to some absurd parts shortage!
It is freakin ridiculous that after all this time blu ray is still a fringe format and most people are still using regular DVDs and playing them unconverting regular DVD players!
WTF Sony! YOU REALLY SUCK!
Blu ray player prices right now should be SUB 200 dollars! In fact it should be around 150 dollars if even half assed competent people get to fix this absurd farce that blu ray has become.
Who the hell is making these assinine decisions in marketing and sales????
I put the blame mostly on SONY which has become a decrepit out of touch behemouth FAILURE AS A COMPANY! SONY is posting losses in the BILLIONS CURRENTLY!
Well, I don’t like all the name calling in posts; but I am amazed by the high prices. Given the limited time window before downloads, on-demand and other streaming technologies make discs of any flavor obsolescent if not obsolete they seem too high.
I would guess that the sweet spot for maximum profits is somewhere in the $100.00 to $175.00 price range.
Anyway, isn’t the real profit in the number of discs they can sell?
The problem is that Blu Ray is not following the standard relatively quick drop in prices curve that all technology naturally goes through. The prices are being held artificially high, and the manufacturers and marketers expect us consumers (and we are not anywhere near as dumb as manufacturers and marketers think we are) to believe that Blu Ray laser heads, logic components, discs, etc., are somehow mystically difficult to manufacture, and thus much more expensive (especially the blank discs – what is up with that totally ridiculous astronomical pricing nonsense???). This is all complete baloney, and anybody who can tie their shoes in the morning knows it, so they should stop insulting our intelligence, lower the prices, sell a respectable volume of units, a bunch of movie titles and blank discs, and everyone will benefit!!!
Also, it is not as if we are slaves to watching movies in the Blu Ray format. We (currently) are slaves to the oil producers and energy providers, but not to watching movies (especially bad movies, which stink just as much in any resolution). We also are resistant to what appears to be just another attempt to get us to update our entire movie libraries.
On-line HD streaming, and solid state or hard drive storage, will soon make the whole disc-based movie world as redundant as 16 mm film, the original huge 12″ video disks, and video tape, unless the prices for Blu Ray quickly fall into a reasonable, i.e., competitive, range.
So, Get A Clue, manufacturers!!! While you are being WAY too greedy, your brief window of opportunity will slam shut on you. This will be another historic example of pricing an otherwise good product right out of the market, until it becomes obsolete.
The consumer is king, and you work for the consumer – not the other way around. Your arrogance will be your undoing.